A new deep-dive published by River, the San Francisco-based Bitcoin services company, argues that the United States has quietly become the planet’s unchallenged Bitcoin hegemon, controlling an estimated 40% of the entire circulating supply. In dollar terms, the report places the combined holdings of American investors, corporations and public entities at “north of $790 billion,” a figure that would eclipse the market capitalisation of most Fortune 50 companies if it were tallied as a single asset on a balance sheet.
The Bitcoin Empire
River’s analysts describe a multi-pronged dominance that extends far beyond raw coin ownership. Publicly listed US firms hold 94.8% of all Bitcoin sitting on corporate treasuries worldwide, the study notes, while American organisations account for 82% of global Bitcoin development funding and roughly 70% of venture capital deployed into the ecosystem. Even the fledgling exchange-traded fund market skews heavily toward domestic investors: the report calculates that US-domiciled ETFs control 79.2% of the outstanding shares for the entire asset class.
Hashrate—often seen as the most tangible measure of security and industrial commitment—also tilts toward America. River estimates that miners operating within US borders generate 36% of global computational power, a share large enough to make the country the single biggest contributor to network security.
Since the start of 2021, those miners have hauled $42.6 billion worth of newly issued Bitcoin out of the protocol, backed by more than $30 billion in capital expenditure on rigs, power contracts and infrastructure. The boom has spawned a cluster of at least 40 industrial-scale sites exceeding 10 megawatts and has pushed the nationwide head-count of Bitcoin-focused firms past 150, collectively employing more than 20,000 Americans.
“America is the global Bitcoin superpower,” the report states in its title banner, before charting the country’s footprint on a map speckled with golden circles for company headquarters and triangles for large-scale mines stretching from Washington State to Georgia’s nuclear-powered corridor.
Texas, Georgia, New York and Ohio appear as dense constellations, underscoring the migration of energy-intensive computing to deregulated or energy-rich states.
Sovereign holdings provide another lens on Washington’s clout. The US government controls approximately 198,000 coins—nearly three times the stash attributed to the United Kingdom and more than ten times the totals linked to China, North Korea or Bhutan. El Salvador, whose president Nayib Bukele has turned Bitcoin into legal tender and a geopolitical calling card, holds a comparatively modest 6,000 coins; Venezuela barely registers at 200.
Institutional ownership is no longer confined to hedge-fund hot-hands or crypto-native treasuries. Endowments at Yale, MIT, Brown and Harvard have all built direct positions or ETF exposures, while insurers such as MassMutual, TIAA and Northwestern Mutual have added the asset to long-duration portfolios traditionally populated by Treasuries and investment-grade credit. Hedge-fund heavyweights Citadel, Millennium, D. E. Shaw and Mariner round out the list of marquee names flagged by River as significant holders.
At press time, BTC traded at $106,510.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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